old age

A friend recently said to me:

A child is the purest form of humanity. He or she has no concern whatsoever with the distinctions that structure so much of our lives: those of wealth, race, colour, religion, gender, and caste. All she cares about is whether the other person she has contact with loves her or not. If they do, then all is well, and the other is a friend, the beloved. Then there is no question of who loves who more, or which of the two is more dependent on the other. Each is caught in the other's gaze, starstruck.

T chipped in: But surely that isn't the full development of our humanity because it is instinctive, not thought through.

Z, not following T's train of thought: Precisely!

Must we learn, once again, to become like little children, wise children?
~~~

Late style:

Hardy/Berger/Huxley (themes and variations)/Said (late style)...

The strange affinity between old age and conservatism, inflexibility, and pessimism. Not as a rule, of course. But it does seem fairly common nonetheless. And for many people who are morally and intellectually conservative-well, the latter is a genuinely rare phenomenon in these parts-the very word liberal suggests decadence and licentiousness.

The attitude to the west (to take up Mani's theme again) is very much like that of the maulvi's toward a beautiful woman: one may reluctantly acknowledge a noteworthy feature or two but he is led to conclude that she is, after all, only a woman!

This deep-rooted conservatism means that many reach old age prematurely. Doors are closed. Change is an inevitable falling away from some prior state of bliss. This is not the same thing, mind you, as the admirable conservatism that can be given form in Montaigne's words (roughly): "to learn how to die is to learn how to let go; to learn how to live, however, means knowing how and what to cling on to"

This is surely an inescapable human trait: the capacity to discern what is valuable and cling on to it, the reaching out into the darkness, holding on, steadfastness..all of this seems to be of a different order to that of the irritable and tired conservatism of the aged which doesn't know how or when to let go, and that is fixated by habit or instinct to one point of view-rather like a child,as Rumi once said, that only knows the breast in one way.